The Daily Grind

I winced. I’d just been asked what I knew about installing apps on Windows. Undeterred by my reply, my colleague continued, waving some printouts at me.

“Oh, I see,” I muttered, “So your MSIEXEC.EXE thingy is furballed. Is it cross-linked with… er… RUNDLL32 dot … something?”

“Yes!’ She exclaimed, excitedly, “That’s exactly what Dell support told me! I have to reinstall something…”

“Reinstall the install shield installer install?” I offered.

“That’s it! You know the problem!”

“No. I’m making this up. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

She looked crushed. “But…” she began.

“This is exactly why I can’t be arsed with Windows. Sorry, but I’ve never managed to solve this sort of thing, and I gave up trying years ago. It sounds like they’re suggesting the right sort of approach, but since I’ve no idea what…” I consult the print-outs “…squibblefumblurg dot coffig does, nor where it should go, nor indeed where it might come from, I really don’t know what I can do to help.”

Sorry, Helen. I’m not trying to be smug, I just genuinely don’t know. I can cut video, build dynamic websites, do half-decent typography and composite photographs. I can rip and splice audio, collate hundreds of news feeds, publish my diary, and network with anything else. I can compile database servers, search a hundred thousand files for the word ‘crocodile,’ and burn DVDs. I can do all of that without knowing a damn thing about troubleshooting Windows.

So Rod Liddle is resigning. What a pity that the man responsible for this is going. Boo! (link is to Real Audio of the Today segment from April on corporate songs… including the performance of the Today Song.)

The smell of freshly-sawn MDF tangs at my nose as I ascend the staircase, emerging into some weird minimalist white view of hell. It’s a pleasant enough space, but I now know that the ‘Ikea chic’ of the catalogue is far more carefully-considered than one might expect. This is simply empty. The immaculately-quoiffed sales exec executes a commendable impression of someone who isn’t turning her nose up at me, and asks what sort of price I’m looking at.

“Well,” I bluster, “around here, I guess a two-bedroom flat is around a hundred thousand. So these places are – what – double that sort of money?”

She smiles graciously, evidently relieved that her judgement is sound and she read me right. “More like double that.”

Oh. P’raps not, then.

I nose around for a few minutes, grateful the decor is so clinically vile, before escaping through the MDF gauntlet.

“The exchange“, in case you were wondering, not that there’s any information there.

This, spotted over on typographica, is absolutely lovely. It’s a letter game thing, but… oh, just have a play. Oh, and keep reloading typographica to see their wacky random banner/CSS thing. Cute.

This is plain bizarre.

If you read many websites, and you’re not using a news aggregator, get with the program(me)! Seriously, this thing has revolutionised my online life. Now made all the better by the availability of news feeds from the BBC: front page, technology, UK, world. Hurrah!

And so it continues. Srebrenica was one of the worst episodes in European history in fifty years. Possibly the worst. And here we’re told that it never happened.

Depressing.

Fixing up someone else’s DTP is one thing… pulling an all-nighter doing it is quite another. Still, 27 programme proposal documents done (plus title pages), and the folder is in the post looking a damn sight better than its equivalent of last year. But still – I’m freelance – shouldn’t I be able to invoice for this shit? [sigh]

Sites like this help restore my faith in Americans. Priceless, if perhaps betrayed as a tad obsessive by its sheer length.

Morcheeba‘s new album Charango is, thankfully, dashed near Big Calm‘s magnificence. That is to say, it’s considerably better listening than their last effort. Best of all, buy the limited edition to receive a ‘free’ extra instrumental disc. Then you too can play ‘spot the forthcoming car advert.’ Nice.